Mal snorted. “So’la doesnotlove me. He went along because he knew it would drive me nuts. Joke's on him. I’m getting the hang of this relaxing business.”
She raised her glass to an invisible So’la and drank half of it down. Bad idea. This was her second mimosa, and she was already tipsy. She’d always been a very cheap date.
She regretted it even more when hooves clacked on the pool’s wood decking, coming in at a rapid staccato.
“Shit,” she said on a long sigh and drank the rest of her mimosa before sitting up. “What’s he done this time?”
She, Edna, and Merrow looked for the maker of the hoof sounds: Elliot, a goat. He’d been gifted to Law by a group of Gwyll. The little people had powerful magic and an opinionated sense of right and wrong. Refusing would have been rude and exceedingly dangerous. Since Law was not stupid, he’d graciously accepted. Unfortunately, Elliot was immune to magic, and he could walk through walls. He was always getting into places he didn’t belong. For instance, he had a particular fondness for LeeAnne’s lingerie drawer and a penchant for tequila.
Drunk magic goats are nothing to laugh about.
Neither was one splashed with blood and carrying a severed hand in his mouth.
About the size of a golden retriever with liver-colored hair, white patches on his nose and between his eight-inch horns, white socks, and an adorably stubby tail tipped with a tuft of white, you’d think he was innocence personified. You’d be wrong.
He skidded to a stop in front of Mal, staring up at her with his slotted eyes wide, then stretched his neck out. Mal reflexively held out her hand, catching the dismembered hand when he dropped it.
It was warm. The cut severing it from its arm was ragged and looked as if someone had hacked at it. It was an oddly small hand, the size of a ten-year-old child’s, maybe, but with heavy calluses, thick fingers, and substantial musculature. The dark hair on the back was coarse and the nails dense, hard, and solid black. Not painted.
Mal’s gaze dropped to Elliot, who stood trembling. She dropped the hand onto her lounge chair and squatted in front of him. She stroked her fingers over him gently, looking for any wounds.
“Are you okay, pretty boy? Did you get hurt?”
He launched himself into her arms, knocking her onto her butt and pressing himself against her stomach, his hooves digging into her thighs, one horn poking into her chest.
Mal put her arms around him and held him, petting him and crooning soft nonsense in his ears.
“Edna, go get Law, please,” she said in the same voice. “Merrow, give me my towel.”
All the ghosts could do the poltergeist thing and influence things in the world. Merrow was particularly good at it and helped Mal clean Elliot off.
“We need to track him back to where this happened,” Mal said.
“If you cast the spell, I can follow it.”
Merrow still retained magic in death, but nothing like she’d had alive, and once she used it, it took a while to recharge.
Some of Elliot’s hair was stuck in the blood on Mal’s fingers. She rubbed the blood-coated strands between her fingers, tying them to the tracking spell she had spell-cut into herself. One of the great no-no’s of witchcraft was spell-cutting. Carving them into your skin and taking them into your flesh and bones made them easy to access without even having to think about them, but it made you a delicious target for magic harvesters if they found out.
Mal had had been worried she’d fail to remember the complex spells when she needed them most, and out of that fear, she’d cut many into herself. After all, if she was going to be bad, might as well go all the way.
The trail lit up in pearly gray. Merrow zipped away without a word. She could go through walls but not if they were warded, which most of the guest rooms at Effrayant were. The guests put up their own wards, and while Law could break them if he chose, it would require great need. Guests stayed at an auberge because it was safe and guaranteed privacy, and the staff didn’t interfere unless the safety of other guests was at stake. If the resident exterminator didn’t have an apocalypse-level reason for entering someone’s private space, there’d be hell to pay.
Mal was pretty sure a severed hand and some blood didn’t qualify, but Merrow would circle the warded spaces until she picked up the trail on the other side, so eventually she’d find the scene of the carnage.
“Do you need any help?”
Mal looked up at a young Aidolon faery. She was beautiful, as they all were. She had typical flowing silvery-lavender hair, pointed ears, and a fine-boned face. Her bathing suit was sort of a bark-leaf-cloth-silver number that of hooked around her neck and wound around her in a spiral.
Her lavender brows were crimped together as she looked down at Elliot.
“Is he okay?”
“He’s scared,” Mal said.
She couldn’t help glancing at the severed hand. The faery’s look followed hers, but she didn’t react, her attention returning to Elliot.
“Did someone hurt him?”
